Red Cross Blogs

Young first aid hero celebrated

By Jamie
November 15, 2010 at 10:13 am

The British Red Cross Humanitarian Citizen Awards are all about recognising the good work undertaken by young people aged under 26 in the UK. This year more than 80 nominations were received for young people who have excelled across four categories – volunteering, community, fundraising and first aid.

Around 25 projects or individuals were invited to attend the awards ceremony held this year in October at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, Central London.

Ross Pickthall took home the award for first aid. Here’s why:

In November 2009 severe floods swept across the North West of England with Cockermouth one of the areas worst hit. As a young British Red Cross emergency response volunteer, Ross helped some of the hundreds left temporarily homeless.

In May 2010, Ross was on board the Keswick school bus when it crashed killing three people. He helped the walking wounded and started to give first aid before the emergency services arrived. Just a month later and communities in Cumbria were again devastated when 12 people were killed by a gunman. Again Ross was part of the British Red Cross response to the shootings. In just a few months Ross showed that he had the willingness, confidence and ability to act to help those in need whoever or wherever they were.

Ross recounts the traumatic events that led him to have a profound appreciation for the contribution of young people to the work of Red Cross:

“I have been a British Red Cross volunteer for three years now and have taken part in many first aid duties and gained some valuable skills. Unfortunately, luck seemed to run out in Cumbria over the last 12 months leaving the Red Cross to help out with the floods in Cockermouth, the bus crash and the shootings. I think that this period of time has shown how vital first aid skills are for everyone, including young people. For me, being a volunteer meant giving my time for something I enjoy. I never expected any sort of recognition for anything that I had done.

This award shows that the Red Cross appreciates what their volunteers do, as does the rest of the world.  Winning the award made me feel proud of what I had done and I hope that the tragedies that have swept through Cumbria and the response to them demonstrate what an impact young people can have on their communities. By learning first aid you have the potential to save a friend or family member, and by volunteering you get the best feeling when someone says those magic two words to you ‘thank you’. It really makes it all worthwhile.”

---

Comment (0) »

---

Tags: humanitarian cititizen awards

The Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 15th, 2010 at 10:13 am and is filed under Young volunteers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---